Thanks for the video Surv. A good rule of thumb for anyone who struggles to remember the numbers is to round the cost of a unit down to nearest 10 then divide by 10 e.g. 45 gold for an archer --> 40 --> 4 vills on gold for one range constant production. It depends on upgrades and efficiency but is close enough to work at lower levels.
Yes, it's surprising how close this trick is to the exact value considering variations in production time and gather rates. Great tip for beginners to reduce memorization. It tends to break down for unique units and siege though.
Is incredibly accurate for Archers and Knights, but isn't even close for Mangonels. Can anyone figure out why that's the case? Math is hard. Would help to know the criteria by which to determine whether richard's method is working or not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@edmis90The div by 10 simplification assumes resources gathering rate of ~20 per minute (wood is ~30) and unit creation time of ~30 sec (archers 35, knights 30, crossbows 27) ≈ 2 units per min. :) Since villagers work faster, the rounding down is not needed for quickly created units (camels, pikes, skirms 22 sec). An eagle warrior requires 50 gold / 20 sec ≈ 6 gold miners (more than expected). A monk 100 gold / 51 sec ≈ 4.5 gold miners (half the expectation)
Excellent as always Mr. Survivalist. I am after starting back at the game recently (Campaign player from 20 years ago). Basically as a total beginner the exact specifics of e.g. 5 on wood, 7 on gold etc. aren't quite relevant for me yet as my gameplay is still ragged, but simply having the mind set of consciously balancing/eco allocation is a massive step at my level. Best tenet of your coaching so far - spend the wood. Thanks again
This is hands down the most helpfull aoe2 video I have ever seen! For a low elo player like me who struggels with balancing my economy this video and your app are a real game changer. Thank you very much, Survivalist!
@@ngastakvakis4425His content isn't really educative, is more informative than anything but as far as making you learn the game it does almost nothing. Still these are my top 3 AoE2 channels, with T90 and Viper being the best entertaining channels
This video needs to be included in the learning campaign..soo informative!! Thank you so much!! I recently saw your hotkey video and I have a "SURVIVALIST" hotkey profile which I'm learning to use. It's new for me but I can already see how much better it is. You make the most practical and useful aoe content on youtube. Not even close.
Great app. AoE2 theory is the best. I'd love to see some content showing which build orders naturally support different transitions in castle age and beyond given the modular approach you so nicely show here. Eg. the cost of shifting to, say, pikes if you were originally massing skirms etc. Or a late shift to HC if you were originally aiming massing bows.
It all depends on when that transition happens though. If you have a bigger economy, it's easier to transition to other units. If you went for early upgrades on skirmishers for example, that will make cav archer transition later much easier. Same for man at arms. If you did maa opening, then longswords is much cheaper. This might be the video you're looking for though: th-cam.com/video/Ja34VoQi_Jo/w-d-xo.html
As a mid-range player who just 'wings it' after 6 vils on sheep and 4 on wood, this is very helpful! At the end of the day, it's just math to hit benchmarks.
Thanks for all your awesome explanations and app.. anytime someone pauses I just assume they’re checking your app for eco balance, which makes my gaming experience very inefficient 🤪
I believe that 6 is actually just barely too slow for food collection, but the buffer of food at the start gives you some leeway. I've noticed it in my early games when I forgot to get my boar.
If you check out my app, I have all of the gather rates here. You can see that you need 6.0606060 on sheep to maintain villager production so your intuition is correct. 6 is just barely not enough, but with the starting food you can easily keep the TC running. aoe2-de-tools.herokuapp.com/villagers-required/
I am surprised that four lakes builds dont say 5 on deer/boar and 7 on wood for faster and easier f ships. I normally skip sheeps, and once i control 2-3 ponds, I dont need farms.
That's a good idea for any map. Going to hunt as soon as you can, using up only 2 sheep, preferably 1. That way 5 on food truly is enough for vill production, albeit requiring a bit of force dropping.
@@CragHack This might become a standard play if premill drush comes back in style. People just load up their food economy these days to get up on 17-18 villagers so they don't even send to wood as soon as they reach villager creation sufficiency on food like "normal" openings.
@@SurvivalistAoE Yep, recently I do 2 on wood and I don't even have to do it right away after 6 on food to have wood on time to make the 2nd building (Mill/Camp) and go up on 18/19 pop. So in reality rushing on wood after only 5 on food (boar) is not necessary or beneficial for most builds, exceptions perhaps being the pre-mill drush and hybrid maps.
I don't know much about team games, but I guess it's because you're not actually committing to fights and just want to take less damage from stray arrows? Blacksmith + Armor is 300 res which could be ~5 more scouts.
Only thing I've found missing on the app, might have mentioned it elsewhere... is the Magyar Scouts costing 68 food. Now the maths can be done fairly easily I think. But still someone might end up making 2 or 3 too many farms in feudal when they didn't need to (e.g. could go for gold and have a smoother up time or get bloodlines earlier and so on).
It's not missing. If you select scouts and scroll down to the numbers there will be a dropdown menu beneath the unit portrait and above the production building incrementer. It's labelled "Civilization" and has "Generic" selected as default. If you click that dropdown menu, you will have the options 'Berbers - Castle Age', 'Berbers - Imperial Age', and 'Magyars Civ Bonus'. If you select Magyars Civ Bonus, the app will update the numbers for a 68 food cost of scouts instead of 80 food cost.
@@Hjoerleif Ah okay, thanks thanks. I was looking at the above scout portrait, thinking that it was the 'more general panel/icon' - and basically that it would be where any extra options would be... there or the 'boxes to the right which determine the unit production speed bonuses I suspect'. My scroll-down also goes to RIGHT above the civilisation drop-down menu too, so missed it when I first checked last night.
Depends a lot on the matchup, but if you want to play mangudai as your opening in imperial age, you should probably start mining it with one of your TCS that you place upon reaching castle age.
@@SurvivalistAoE I’ve noticed I tend to run out of wood and gold by the time I’m early Imp because of the mangudais, and can’t mass mangudais and tebuchets at the same time
Transitioning to Mangudai is pretty difficult. It's hard to give good advice without seeing an actual replay. Just know that if you make knights in the mid game, late game there won't be as much gold to mine.@@thenosa87
awesome video and awesome app, playing with the app i encounter that to create a teutonic knight it says i need 21 farms (85 food) and for a persian elephant i need 21 farms (170 food), is this expected behaviour because the app assumes you are in castle age?
The Teutonic Knight has a creation time of 12 seconds. That's 5 Teutonic Knights per minute, 5*85=425 The War Elephant has a creation time of 25 seconds. That's 2.4 War Elephants per minute, 2.4*170=408 So due to the different creation times these units have roughly the same food requirements per minute with sustained production, with only about
Using villager count should be the standard, but in the past we didn't have it shown on the UI so many old pros are still stuck with using the population count for everything. It gets a bit tricky when it's more than just the scout cav involved though...
@@SurvivalistAoE I'm an idiot and thought you went up at 24 pop, but you did go up on 24 villagers. Disregard and I appreciate your videos and coaching.
![How to Attack Your Opponent [Age of Empires 2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cl8fqToNv4w/mqdefault.jpg)
![How to Attack Your Opponent [Age of Empires 2]](/img/tr.png)
![Villager takes a photo of himself once a year for 100 years [Re-uploaded]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/B7Yh2ZA-Stc/mqdefault.jpg)
This is probably the most important video for anyone who wants to learn aoe2. Thank you very much for your effort
Thanks for the video Surv. A good rule of thumb for anyone who struggles to remember the numbers is to round the cost of a unit down to nearest 10 then divide by 10 e.g. 45 gold for an archer --> 40 --> 4 vills on gold for one range constant production. It depends on upgrades and efficiency but is close enough to work at lower levels.
Yes, it's surprising how close this trick is to the exact value considering variations in production time and gather rates. Great tip for beginners to reduce memorization. It tends to break down for unique units and siege though.
You have nooo idea how mind blowing this technique is! Holy crap so much more helpful when ur in a pinch!! Thank you! ❤
Thanks for this comment
Helps a lot as a guide
Is incredibly accurate for Archers and Knights, but isn't even close for Mangonels.
Can anyone figure out why that's the case? Math is hard.
Would help to know the criteria by which to determine whether richard's method is working or not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@edmis90The div by 10 simplification assumes resources gathering rate of ~20 per minute (wood is ~30) and unit creation time of ~30 sec (archers 35, knights 30, crossbows 27) ≈ 2 units per min. :)
Since villagers work faster, the rounding down is not needed for quickly created units (camels, pikes, skirms 22 sec). An eagle warrior requires 50 gold / 20 sec ≈ 6 gold miners (more than expected). A monk 100 gold / 51 sec ≈ 4.5 gold miners (half the expectation)
Thanks for the video and for the app you've built, amazing contribution to the community!
Thank you for this video, builds make a lot more sense now
What a great video! Liked and subscribed!
I love your intro song. It's just epic enough to not be cringy, and just cringy enough to not be epic.
Excellent as always Mr. Survivalist. I am after starting back at the game recently (Campaign player from 20 years ago). Basically as a total beginner the exact specifics of e.g. 5 on wood, 7 on gold etc. aren't quite relevant for me yet as my gameplay is still ragged, but simply having the mind set of consciously balancing/eco allocation is a massive step at my level. Best tenet of your coaching so far - spend the wood. Thanks again
This is hands down the most helpfull aoe2 video I have ever seen! For a low elo player like me who struggels with balancing my economy this video and your app are a real game changer. Thank you very much, Survivalist!
May be the best AOE2 instructor on the net
Survivalist and Hera are the best sources of educative aoe2 content.
i'll be joining the fray soon, making an app that will generate builds to follow ig as you play
Spirit of the Law is king.
@@ngastakvakis4425His content isn't really educative, is more informative than anything but as far as making you learn the game it does almost nothing.
Still these are my top 3 AoE2 channels, with T90 and Viper being the best entertaining channels
This video needs to be included in the learning campaign..soo informative!! Thank you so much!! I recently saw your hotkey video and I have a "SURVIVALIST" hotkey profile which I'm learning to use. It's new for me but I can already see how much better it is. You make the most practical and useful aoe content on youtube. Not even close.
Thanks for being here and thanks for the comment!
Amigo, sos un campeón, lo que le aportas a la comunidad es muchísimo! Muchas gracias desde Argentina
I'm trying to get to 1600 using only Byzantines. Slowly realizing I need to improve my macro by a lot. Thanks for the video and the app!
Video edition and content is top notch! outstanding work and thanks for sharing your knowledge
Survivalist+SpiritOfTheLaw= 500 ELO boost
Great app. AoE2 theory is the best. I'd love to see some content showing which build orders naturally support different transitions in castle age and beyond given the modular approach you so nicely show here. Eg. the cost of shifting to, say, pikes if you were originally massing skirms etc. Or a late shift to HC if you were originally aiming massing bows.
It all depends on when that transition happens though. If you have a bigger economy, it's easier to transition to other units. If you went for early upgrades on skirmishers for example, that will make cav archer transition later much easier. Same for man at arms. If you did maa opening, then longswords is much cheaper.
This might be the video you're looking for though: th-cam.com/video/Ja34VoQi_Jo/w-d-xo.html
Sick intro!
thanks for the indepth explanation!
As a software person, this app is amazing, Survivalist. Great job on that.
Thank you for so much información put together. ❤
Great video Surv! The app you made is really really helpful, thank you very much for making it!
Keep it coming Surv! This is awesome
This app is so good! Many thanks!
As a mid-range player who just 'wings it' after 6 vils on sheep and 4 on wood, this is very helpful!
At the end of the day, it's just math to hit benchmarks.
Doing the same tactic :P That winging has got me to 1750 in 6 months tho :D
Thanks for all your awesome explanations and app.. anytime someone pauses I just assume they’re checking your app for eco balance, which makes my gaming experience very inefficient 🤪
i've always gone 19 pop, two on wood, rest on food. the wood i need gets mined after i click up by throwing almost all vills under tc to wood.
Great video
This video is a masterpiece. Thanks man.
Love this, would check the website next time I play.
Congrqtulations for this video! Or as we say here in Argentina: "Mucho nene!!!! Vos sos crack!!!"
Thank you Survivalist
Wow. Another fantastic one surv!!! ❤
Beautifully prepared.
Thanks bro
I swear I only play aoe4 but I watch your video for knowledge.
I believe that 6 is actually just barely too slow for food collection, but the buffer of food at the start gives you some leeway. I've noticed it in my early games when I forgot to get my boar.
If you check out my app, I have all of the gather rates here. You can see that you need 6.0606060 on sheep to maintain villager production so your intuition is correct. 6 is just barely not enough, but with the starting food you can easily keep the TC running.
aoe2-de-tools.herokuapp.com/villagers-required/
Great info and great editing, as usual
💯👌
I am surprised that four lakes builds dont say 5 on deer/boar and 7 on wood for faster and easier f ships. I normally skip sheeps, and once i control 2-3 ponds, I dont need farms.
That's a good idea for any map. Going to hunt as soon as you can, using up only 2 sheep, preferably 1.
That way 5 on food truly is enough for vill production, albeit requiring a bit of force dropping.
@@CragHack This might become a standard play if premill drush comes back in style. People just load up their food economy these days to get up on 17-18 villagers so they don't even send to wood as soon as they reach villager creation sufficiency on food like "normal" openings.
@@SurvivalistAoE Yep, recently I do 2 on wood and I don't even have to do it right away after 6 on food to have wood on time to make the 2nd building (Mill/Camp) and go up on 18/19 pop.
So in reality rushing on wood after only 5 on food (boar) is not necessary or beneficial for most builds, exceptions perhaps being the pre-mill drush and hybrid maps.
Excellent channel 🎉🎉🎉
Excellent video.
In team games you want the blacksmith for scout armor much much earlier, around 10-11 farmers
I don't know much about team games, but I guess it's because you're not actually committing to fights and just want to take less damage from stray arrows? Blacksmith + Armor is 300 res which could be ~5 more scouts.
So bang, so good!
Thanks for the amazing aoe 2 content u r the best
Only thing I've found missing on the app, might have mentioned it elsewhere... is the Magyar Scouts costing 68 food. Now the maths can be done fairly easily I think. But still someone might end up making 2 or 3 too many farms in feudal when they didn't need to (e.g. could go for gold and have a smoother up time or get bloodlines earlier and so on).
It's not missing. If you select scouts and scroll down to the numbers there will be a dropdown menu beneath the unit portrait and above the production building incrementer. It's labelled "Civilization" and has "Generic" selected as default. If you click that dropdown menu, you will have the options 'Berbers - Castle Age', 'Berbers - Imperial Age', and 'Magyars Civ Bonus'. If you select Magyars Civ Bonus, the app will update the numbers for a 68 food cost of scouts instead of 80 food cost.
@@Hjoerleif Ah okay, thanks thanks. I was looking at the above scout portrait, thinking that it was the 'more general panel/icon' - and basically that it would be where any extra options would be... there or the 'boxes to the right which determine the unit production speed bonuses I suspect'. My scroll-down also goes to RIGHT above the civilisation drop-down menu too, so missed it when I first checked last night.
Awesome video man.
I like mongols. When is the optimal time I should be mining stone so I can get started with mangudais?
Depends a lot on the matchup, but if you want to play mangudai as your opening in imperial age, you should probably start mining it with one of your TCS that you place upon reaching castle age.
@@SurvivalistAoE I’ve noticed I tend to run out of wood and gold by the time I’m early Imp because of the mangudais, and can’t mass mangudais and tebuchets at the same time
Transitioning to Mangudai is pretty difficult. It's hard to give good advice without seeing an actual replay. Just know that if you make knights in the mid game, late game there won't be as much gold to mine.@@thenosa87
@@SurvivalistAoE thank you!
Underrated channel
awesome video and awesome app, playing with the app i encounter that to create a teutonic knight it says i need 21 farms (85 food) and for a persian elephant i need 21 farms (170 food), is this expected behaviour because the app assumes you are in castle age?
The Teutonic Knight has a creation time of 12 seconds. That's 5 Teutonic Knights per minute, 5*85=425
The War Elephant has a creation time of 25 seconds. That's 2.4 War Elephants per minute, 2.4*170=408
So due to the different creation times these units have roughly the same food requirements per minute with sustained production, with only about
@@Hjoerleif oh yeah i totally forgot about the creation timers thanks it makes sense now
never comment but thanks for this content
in the intro you say up on 24 villagers instead of 24 pop. I'm a low elo legend but it might confuse some noobs
Since you get 3 militia it will be 28 pop then, provided the scout still lives
Using villager count should be the standard, but in the past we didn't have it shown on the UI so many old pros are still stuck with using the population count for everything. It gets a bit tricky when it's more than just the scout cav involved though...
@@SurvivalistAoE I'm an idiot and thought you went up at 24 pop, but you did go up on 24 villagers. Disregard and I appreciate your videos and coaching.
why my comment deleted? :(
I was sleeping after I made this go live, so it could've been some TH-cam thing. What did you want to say?
@@SurvivalistAoE "best app ever, even better then tinder" haha lov u bro
@@Elron089 11 nice :D
Mine gold 1st, if wood or food low then gold -》tree or farm. Buy food or wood in market if need.
Great video